Effectiveness of Media Intervention on Students' Attitudes toward Drug and Tobacco: Based on Health Education and Legal Consequences

  Background and purpose: Drug and tobacco addiction is one of the major threats to adolescents and educating this group could be of great benefit in preventing the problem. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of media intervention on students' attitude towards drug and tobacco use. Materials and methods: In this quasi-experimental research a male high school was randomly selected. The subjects were assigned into either an experimental group (n= 30) or a control group (n= 30). Attitude questionnaire was performed in both groups. Pre-test was conducted in the groups. Then, the experimental group received audio and visual messages derived from 12 educational sessions. Data at pre-test and post-test were compared to investigate the efficacy of the intervention. Data analysis was done applying independent t-test and analysis of covariance. Results: The findings showed that education through audio and visual messages had a significant effect on changing students' attitude in the subscale of interest in consumption (Eta1= 0.29 and Eta2= 0.19), physiologic (Eta1 and Eta2= 0.12), mental health (Eta1= 0.1 and Eta2= 0.16), and social (Eta1= 0.09 and Eta2= 0.21) effects. These messages also significantly changed the total score for attitude toward drugs (Eta1=0.06 and Eta2= 0.09) (P= 0.001). Indeed, the average negative attitudes towards drugs and tobacco and their subscales increased after receiving the educational messages. Conclusion: Both methods of education (visual and audio messages) were found to be effective on the students 'attitude towards drug abuse, tobacco and addiction, and strengthened the students' negative attitude. But, visual messages were more effective and authorities should pay more attention on this.